The present invention generally relates to garment hangers, and it is specifically directed to devices for attaching to hangers in order to prevent unsightly creasing and puckering along the shoulder areas of hanged garments that can occur due to the width or diameter of a hanger's arms being considerably less than the width of human shoulders for which a particular garment is intended (a problem that is exacerbated by increased garment weight) or due to incongruence between the respective lengths of a hanger's arms and a garment's shoulders.
Garment hangers come in a variety of styles and sizes which are typically fabricated of either metal wire, plastic or wood. In the dry cleaning industry, for example, cylindrical wire hangers are most often used to mount cleaned garments on because of their relatively low cost of manufacture. Moreover, for simplicity, a dry cleaner will typically use only one size (in terms of wire diameter & shoulder length) of hanger for all of its cleaned garments. However, the proposition of using a single model of hanger to support each of many garments of widely varying masses, shoulder dimensions, and material impressionability can be problematic. For example, it is generally undesirable to use a wire hanger to support a men's suit jacket because the small gauge (diameter) of the hanger wire, coupled with the weight of the jacket, may form a crease running along the shoulder area of the jacket. Furthermore, if the hanger arms are shorter than the jacket's shoulder length, puckers may form at the respective spots along each of the jacket arms where the hanger arm ends and the jacket arm, therefore, abruptly begins freely hanging down under its own weight, unsupported by hanger arm. In fact, the jacket may easily slide off the hanger entirely if too much arm length is unsupported. To address these and similar hanger-garment size incompatibility issues, a plethora of hanger attachment devices have been developed in the prior art.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,053,379 to Balph discloses a hanger sleeve extension comprising a tubular body formed by a hanger engagement portion for sliding over a hanger arm, as well as a sleeve insert portion that extends outward from the engagement portion. In a preferred embodiment, the hanger engagement portion is simply a fabric sleeve with fastening cords at its proximal end, while the sleeve insert portion comprises a fabric-covered, high-density synthetic material that exhibits some degree of rigidity. However, the present inventor recognizes a deficiency in the Balph device with regard to the tedious need for a user to tie each of two attachments' tie cords to the base of the hanger hook (and subsequently untie them when it is necessary to remove the attachments) in order to prevent the attachments from sliding off the hanger as a garment is being removed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,267,275 to Murray discloses a unitary, elongated, flexible body of resilient foam material, such as flexible polyurethane foam, that features a half-slit running longitudinally along the body and a shorter, longitudinally centered, through-slit. The through-slit allows a hanger hook to protrude up through the body while the resilient material conforms to hanger arms enveloped within the half-slit. In a preferred embodiment, a flocking material covers the resilient foam. The present inventor recognizes, however, that while the Murray device may certainly be effective in preventing the kind of longitudinally oriented creases that a wire hanger might create along the length of a garment shoulder, it still may not prevent the forming of puckers, or even lateral creases, in larger garments having shoulder length dimensions greater than the length of supporting hanger arms. That is because the outer segment of garment shoulder that is not undergirded by hanger arm and/or highly rigid foam material will be left to hang and will abruptly bend downward and form a pucker or lateral crease at the point which that underlying, sufficiently rigid support ends.
If, on the contrary, an embodiment of the Murray device comprises a foam body that is both long enough to extend as far beyond the length of a standard-sized hanger arm as is necessary to span the entire shoulder length of a broad-shouldered, heavy garment and rigid enough to, in fact, support that outer shoulder area of the garment and prevent it from abruptly bending at the point where the hanger arm ends, then that foam body may tend to be too long and inflexible to stow into many suitcases and other travel compartments. So, in the judgment of the present inventor, the Murray device presents an undesirable tension between (a) compatibility with a wide range of garments and (b) efficient storability and/or portability.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,840,413 to Cameron, et al. describes a hanger-mountable device for preventing creases and wrinkles that is formed by an elongate, injection molded article having a cylindrical exterior surface and a length-running opening that leads into a hollow interior which is slightly smaller in diameter than is the hanger arm to which the device is to attach. In some embodiments, this interior hollow space has a cylindrical profile so as to conform to cylindrical wire or plastic hangers, and in other embodiments it has a different profile (e.g., rectangular) for accommodating non-cylindrical profiled hanger arms. Furthermore, in addition to having the appropriate shape, the molded interior space should be precisely dimensioned to snuggly conform to a particular hanger's arms.
Nevertheless, the present inventor recognizes that while the Cameron device can effectively prevent creasing and wrinkling of clothing draped along the lengths of both the crossbar and arm sections of hangers, it is not suitable for addressing the puckering and creasing that, for example, the Murray device addresses by extending a hanger's support surface beyond the length of its arms. In fact, the Cameron patent discloses and explicitly claims that the device is to be modified by way of cutting off the portion of the device which exceeds the length of the hanger arm that it is to be installed onto. Moreover, if one were to simply imagine a Cameron-like device that did extend beyond the length of hanger arms to provide extended, non-creasing support for garment arms, one could just as easily imagine the potential for such a device to become detached from a hanger arm due to the weight of the clothing material.
More specifically, vertical load applied, by clothing material, along the span of such an attachment device which extends beyond its span of attachment to a hanger arm will create torque on that device. In other words, the portion of such an attachment device which is attached to hanger arm will be urged away from that arm. Considering that such a device features a slit opening and is, likely, flexible enough for the opening to momentarily expand to receive a hanger arm being intentionally pressed into it or to release a hanger arm being intentionally pulled out of it, one could expect a similar widening of that opening and release of the device caused by torque generated by the sheer weight of clothing acting on the extension part of such a device. This could obviously result in such a device accidentally detaching from a hanger.
Consequently, the present inventor appreciates a need for a hanger attachment device that, in view of prior art, is improved relative to its ability to be used with hangers of many different specifications and is effective in supporting, without creasing or puckering, garments of a wide range of shoulder lengths while remaining less bulky and more efficiently storable than are many of its prior art counterparts. The present inventor also appreciates the need for such a hanger attachment device to be configured in a way that secures it to hanger sufficiently to prevent unwanted detachment caused by garment-applied torque. The present invention for a hanger attachment device substantially fulfills these needs.